The main part of this thesis treats measurements in the HELIOS experiment of the production of e-mu and mu+mu-pairs in 450 GeV/c p-Be collisions. The mumu measurement covers the kinematical covers the kinematical range of 2Mmu < M < 1.5 GeV, 0.03 < xF < 0.25, and 0 < pT < 2 GeV. Production of the vector mesons rho, omega , and phi is observed. The branching ratio omega to mu+mu- is for the first time experimentally measured. The continuum at masses below the mu mass is studied, and compared with the contributions from known sources, normalized to the vector meson peaks in the mu+mu- mass spectrum, and to measurements in this experiment of the mu cross section. The res ult is compared with that of other experiments, discussed in terms of different background estimates used. A significant signal of unlike-sign e-mu-pairs is observed, forming a continuum peaking at a mass below 500 MeV. Correlations between e-mu and neutrino production are studied. The shape of the e-mu mass and missng-energy spectra indicate significant non-charm contributions. A search for lepton-number-violating decays is made, resulting in upper limits on a number of branching ratios. Also discussed here is the author's work in the DELPHI experiment, contributions that are related to analysis of heavy quark production. Keywords: muon. pair, dimuon, dilepton, lepton, low mass, continuum, eta, rho, omega, branching ratio, emu, e-mu, mue, mu-e, muon-electron, electron-muon, electron, charm, neutrino, missing energy

Language is essentially always present in groups of modern humans. Even in the exceptional groups that for some reason are formed without language, language will invariably emerge in short order. Examples of language emergence in recent times include deaf communities in e.g. Nicaragua and Israel. Such newly-formed languages converge within a few generations towards the same general form and features as mainstream human languages.

Language is essentially never present in groups of non-human primates. Even in the exceptional groups that are heavily exposed to language and explicitly trained in language use, progress in language acquisition is invariably modest at best. Language never emerges spontaneously in non-human groups.

What’s special with humans? It is sometimes argued that “all you need is merge” (e.g. Berwick 2007), that a small genetic change provided a language-ready brain and the rest is history. This saltational view of language evolution is wrong for many reasons (e.g. Tallerman 2014), but I would add here another one.

A language-ready brain is not an all-or-nothing affair, nor is it sufficient for language emergence. The results of language training in apes are modest, but not nil. Apes do learn to connect symbols with referents and use them communicatively. One may quibble about whether to call this “language”, and it is far from full human language, notably lacking in syntax. But it does show the presence of some language-relevant abilities in apes, and it is a functional communication tool at some protolinguistic level.

But if ape brains are protolanguage-ready, why doesn’t protolanguage emerge in the wild among apes, as it does among humans? Clearly, some extra-linguistic key factor is lacking. A language-ready brain is not all you need for language emergence. In a group of hypothetical creatures with a human language faculty (narrow sense) but otherwise ape-like in psychology and behavior, language would not emerge.

Human prosociality and shared intentionality are likely key ingredients in language emergence (e.g. Tomasello 2010), but are not the whole story. In this talk, I will explore the minimal extra-linguistic requirements for protolanguage emergence to get off the ground in protohumans.

References:

Berwick, R C (2011) All you Need is Merge: Biology, Computation, and Language from the Bottom-up. In di Sciullo & Boeckx The Biolinguistic Enterprise OUP.

Noam Chomsky (2005) proposed that a ‘third factor’, consisting of general principles and natural laws, may explain core properties of language in a principled manner, minimizing the need for either genetic endowment or experience. But the focus on third-factor patterns in much recent bio-linguistic work is misguided for several reasons: First, ‘the’ third factor is a vague and disparate collection of unrelated components, useless as an analytical tool. Second, the vagueness of the third factor, together with the desire for principled explanations, too often leads to sweeping claims, such as syntax “coming for free, directly from physics”, that are unwarranted without a case-by-case causal analysis. Third, attention is diverted away from a proper causal analysis of language as a biological feature. The point with biolinguistics is to acknowledge the language faculty as a biological feature. The best way forward towards an understanding of language is to take the biology connection seriously, instead of dabbling with physics.

The precise timing of the emergence of language in human prehistory cannot be resolved. But the available evidence is sufficient to constrain it to some degree. This is a review and synthesis of the available evidence, leading to the conclusion that the time when speech in some form became important for our ancestors can be constrained to be not less than 400,000 years ago, thus excluding several popular theories involving a late transition to speech.

The precise timing of the emergence of language in human prehistory cannot be resolved. But the available evidence is sufficient to constrain it to some degree. This is a review and synthesis of the available evidence, leading to the conclusion that the time when speech became important for our ancestors can be constrained to be not less than 500,000 years ago, thus excluding several popular theories involving a late transition to speech.

It is commonly assumed in evolutionary linguistics that language evolved for communication.But much recent work in biolinguistics, e.g. Chomsky (2010), proposes instead that languageevolved for purely internal use, as a cognitive tool, with no externalization until at a later stagein language evolution.How well supported is really our general assumption of communicative language origins? Doesit make sense to have instead an early stage with internal language only? I will review the argumentsinvoked in favor of the incommunicado hypothesis, and critically evaluate their strength.

Why do humans have language at all and how did we become language users? These are central questions in language evolution, but no general consensus exists on the answers, nor even on what methods to use to find answers. This is a complex topic that requires input from many disciplines, including, but not limited to, linguistics, evolutionary biology, palaeoanthropology, neurobiology, archaeology, cognitive science, and primatology. Nobody is an expert in all these areas, and experts in one area sometimes overlook needed input from other areas. Consensus does not even exist among linguists on what language is—opinions range from the physical speech acts themselves to language as an abstract social communication system to language as computational machinery in the individual and to language as an innate species-defining, genetically encoded capacity of humans. These different views of language imply very different evolutionary explanations. At the same time, all of these perspectives have some validity; the speech acts do occur, language use does take place in a social context, the individual language user does somehow produce and parse sentences, and human babies are born with a predisposition for language learning that ape babies lack. The disagreements are mainly a matter of emphasis, namely which aspects are regarded as of primary interest, requiring explanation. The preeminent linguist of the early 20th century, Ferdinand de Saussure, focused on the first two perspectives with his distinction between parole (speech acts) and langue (the social system). The preeminent linguist of the late 20th century, Noam Chomsky, focuses instead on the latter two, especially the computational machinery, and he regards the first two as not worthy of a linguist’s attention. But neither focus is adequate on its own; a viable theory of language evolution must be able to explain all aspects of language, notably both the evolution of the language capacity that resides in each human brain and the evolution of the human social context in which language is used. No generally accepted theory exists today. Instead of a single accepted theory, the field of language evolution is awash with a multitude of different models, scenarios, and hypotheses about how things might have happened. To make matters worse, there is something of a paradigm split in the study of language origins. The split is largely along the line between Saussure and Chomsky mentioned above. To put it simply, those researchers who use the label “biolinguistics” try to explain the origin of Chomsky’s computational machinery (see Biolinguistics) whereas most work on language evolution is concerned with explaining the origins of Saussure’s langue, language as a social system; the latter is here called “mainstream evolutionary linguistics.” Language evolution is not, however, about the origin of individual languages (English, Chinese, etc.). Sometimes “language evolution” is used to refer to diachronic language change in recent times, as studied by historical linguists, and an evolutionary perspective can indeed be fruitful in this area. But this article does not cover that kind of language evolution, except peripherally in Cultural Evolution.

Neanderthal language abilities cannot be directly observed, but indirect evidence is available in their anatomy, archeology, and DNA. Neanderthal anatomy shows possible speech adaptations, and their archeology contains enough indicators of behavioral modernity, including symbols and ornaments, to conclude that their minds could handle symbolic communication. Neanderthal DNA, finally, indicates both that they possessed some of the language-relevant genes found in modern humans and that they could and did have children with modern humans. From the consilience of evidence from anatomy, archeology, and DNA, one can conclude that some language abilities, if not necessarily full modern syntactic language, were present in Neanderthals.

Ackermann et al. treat both genetic and paleoanthropological data too superficially to support their conclusions. The case of FOXP2 and Neanderthals is a prime example, which I will comment on in some detail; the issues are much more complex than they appear in Ackermann et al.

Sverker Johansson has written an unusual book on language origins, with its emphasis on empirical evidence rather than theory-building. This is a book for the student or researcher who prefers solid data and well-supported conclusions, over speculative scenarios. Much that has been written on the origins of language is characterized by hypothesizing largely unconstrained by evidence. But empirical data do exist, and the purpose of this book is to integrate and review the available evidence from all relevant disciplines, not only linguistics but also, e.g., neurology, primatology, paleoanthropology, and evolutionary biology. The evidence is then used to constrain the multitude of scenarios for language origins, demonstrating that many popular hypotheses are untenable. Among the issues covered: (1) Human evolutionary history, (2) Anatomical prerequisites for language, (3) Animal communication and ape "language", (4) Mind and language, (5) The role of gesture, (6) Innateness, (7) Selective advantage of language, (8) Proto-language.

Identifying possible stages of protolanguage critically depends on the underlying nature of language. Theories of language differ in evolvability, and in whether they permit protolanguage stages. In this presentation, I will study the protolanguage potential and evolva­bility of Construction Grammar. Postulating that CG is a biologically real description of language, its evolvability through a sequence of intermediate protolanguages is investigated.

In holistic theories of protolanguage, a vital step is the fractionation process where holistic utterances are broken down into segments, and segments associated with semantic components. One problem for this process may be the occurrence of counterexamples to any segment-meaning connection. The actual abundance of such counterexamples is a contentious issue \cite{smith06,taller07}. Here I present calculations of the prevalence of counterexamples in model languages. It is found that counterexamples are indeed abundant, much more numerous than positive examples for any plausible holistic language.

The case for Neanderthal language - How strong is it?2012In: The evolution of language: proceedings of the 9th International Conference (EVOLANG9), Kyoto, Japan, 13-16 March 2012, Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Company, Incorporated , 2012Conference paper (Refereed)

Abstract [en]

Did Neanderthals have language? This issue has been debated back and forth for decades, without resolution. But in recent years new evidence has become available. New fossils and archaeological finds cast light on relevant Neanderthal anatomy and behaviour. New DNA evidence, both fossil and modern, provides clues both to the relationship between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, and to the genetics of language. In this paper, I review and evaluate the available evidence. My conclusion is that the preponderance of the evidence supports the presence of some form of language in Neanderthals.